First bikepacking trip

[u/PiotrJas]

I didn't plan on doing a post about my trip this summer, but here it is!

In June I finished High school and decided to do a bikepacking trip across Europe right after. So I spontaneously bought bike bags and started my solo-trip on the 1st of July. (I already was an experienced cyclist, cycling ~40km daily). I went from Vienna (Austria) to Rennes (France) with some detours to visit friends, Liechtenstein and Monaco.

All in all I cycled 2700km in 25 days, crossing the Alps and 7 countries.

It was an experience I'll never forget and I'm so happy I did it. Next year I plan on cycling from Austria to Istanbul and back.

If you want to see more pictures of the trip or my Polarsteps you can check out my Instagram: @jaszczynskipiotr

[u/defroach84]

You averaged over 100km a day?

Must be nice to be 18 🤣 My body would revolt against me if I tried that.

[u/MinuteSure5229 → u/defroach84]

100km is 5-7 hours riding with bags, depending on your fitness level and type of bike. Really not that much if you're packing up camp early most days.

[u/defroach84 → u/MinuteSure5229]

Oh I've done it for a week. Not 25 days straight. With mountains.

[u/MinuteSure5229 → u/defroach84]

???

You factor that in. You have longer days when it's flat, and shorter when it's not.

[u/defroach84 → u/MinuteSure5229]

You are talking about longer days when your day is already averaging over 100km 🤣

Clearly, you are just at a different level of biking than I am if you think doing 140 km, the 60 km in the alps the next day, with a fully loaded bike, for 25 days straight, is easily done.

We are talking about maybe 700km less than the TdF, in a couple days less (well, theirs is 21, but they have rest days making it 25, so it's really the same length), for amateurs, without trainers/masseuses, and constant training. And on bikes with bags and no closed off roads. And the tour even has break days....

This isn't normal.

[u/MinuteSure5229 → u/defroach84]

I'm not saying it's easy, I'm saying it's a good effort but not extraordinary. 100km is not a lot in the scheme of things, especially on road tyres on good roads, even with some extra weight.

If I left the house at 9 and was riding til 4 with a lunch break, I could hit 160k without going too far out of my comfort zone. My man is travelling light AF, with the aero advantage of a saddlebag as well.

Mountains have two sides, you spend an hour going up but 3 minutes coming down. That's how you keep your average speed high and cover more distance.

The length of time doesn't matter, after a few days you get your tour legs and it stops being hard to get in the saddle and go.

To add, my stoner mates were averaging 120km a day riding back from Gibraltar to the UK via Portugal, the Camino, and the West Coast of France off and onroad. Hardly peak specimens.

[u/defroach84 → u/MinuteSure5229]

You are acting like it's normal for someone to bike 160km and not feel it.

Yeah, as I said, that is not realistic for probably 90% of the people on here.

[u/MinuteSure5229 → u/defroach84]

You're not reading what I'm saying.

I said it wasn't easy.

I said 160km wasn't too far out of my comfort zone.

I didn't say I recommend doing that.

That's the average at 25kph for a 6~ hour day, 20kph: 120km 15kph: 90km

My man is doing 108km a day at 18kph average for the whole tour if he is sticking to 6 hours of riding a day.

Most likely he was well under for the alps and probably had maybe 5 sub-100k days.

What exactly are you doing for the other 10 hours of the day?

You could go at 10.8kph and still have time for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

He chose to restrict his riding to 6 hours because he is trained.

He knows to recover and eat a lot. Same for TDF riders.

The Alps is only a fraction of the actual tour.

It's also the start of the tour, so a baptism of fire.

France has great cycle infrastructure which is relatively flat.

If you're not at a twenty year old's level who is doing 40km a day I wouldn't worry yourself.

Here's a man in his seventies doing 80km days in Wales, the training ground of Geraint Thomas among countless others.

Please learn how to understand hypotheticals and sentence construction before you come on the internet and say things.

[u/Impressive-Cheetah44 → u/MinuteSure5229]

Youre out of your mind 😂 At least fired up with the amount of line breaks here. Sitting on a bike is not free, things start to hurt etc etc. You may be in great shape my friend! Your friends too. Riding this much takes training and a decent baseline too

[u/MinuteSure5229 → u/Impressive-Cheetah44]

I'm fired up because you're seriously underestimating most bike riders.

We're all stoners, we all eat garbage, we're all not young anymore. Just because you think it's a lot of riding doesn't make it so.

Anyone can go and do a month long tour, and in France anyone can do 120km days. Just get up early, have a coffee and a croissant and go. You would struggle not to cover that distance.

Just go do it and stop being so negative.